PERSONA NEAPOLITAN PIZZERIA OPENS

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Award-winning pizzaiolo and executive chef Glenn Cybulski along with chef, founder and president Joseph Baumel have opened Persona Neapolitan Pizzeria at 905 State Street in Santa Barbara, formerly The Taj Café. Baumel tells me that their Neapolitan style (thin crust) pizza takes only about a minute to bake using ovens that are 300 degrees hotter than most eateries use. “We are in the fast-casual segment of the industry,” Baumel says. “It is a create-your-own authentic Neapolitan pizzeria.”

Everybody gets a 12-inch pizza. The eatery offers 4 proprietary specialty pizzas along with a “pizza bar” where each customer can choose from a variety of fresh ingredients. They roll-out dough fresh in front of the guest so every pizza is essentially made to order. Then the guest has the opportunity to select one of their home-made sauces, cheeses, and proteins toppings (3 of which are made in house). The restaurant offers gelato made by an Austrian-born, Milano-trained gelato chef in Los Angeles and a fresh salad station where all the dressings are made from scratch.

“All of our ingredients are fresh,” Cybulski tells me. “The meatball and sauce recipes have won double gold medals. The Chipotle Chicken specialty pizza, in 2007, won the ‘Best Pizza in North America’ at the world pizza championship.” While visiting the new restaurant chef Cybulski made me a 12-inch Margherita Pizza which costs just $6.95. I made a short video of the entire pizza-making process that can be viewed above.

Sal’s in Milpas Street. Persona is not related to Sal’s. My
fiance and I had the pleasure of having dinner with Joe just before
Persona opened. Amazing guy! And very down to Earth. I can’t wait
to try Persona. Best wishes to Joe and co.!!

Just watched the video and I must say that pie looks great. Cybulski sounds like he knows his craft and is putting out a great product with high quality ingredients at a fair price.

I’ve tried this concept elsewhere and found the Achilles heal to be the staff. To make a proper Neaoplitan pie you need to have some skills and significant practice. One does not simply become a true pizzaiolo overnight. If there staff member topping and firing the pie does not do it correctly the final result is of far less quality than what you see in the video and in the pictures of the pies from this place I have seen. Hopefully Cybulski stays intimately involved and doesn’t let some underpaid hack take over the ovens as so far this looks great!

Noteworthy too is this is not authentic Neapolitan, in the video you can clearly see the oven is not wood fired. It looks to be a gas fired oven in the traditional shape and fire placement of a WFO. One can whine about authenticity all day long, but at this price point how can you complain? The pies looked to be cooked properly at high heat with quality products, hopefully the public will understand that a little char on the dough is key and they won’t be forced into turning the oven temps down or pulling them out sooner as there’s nothing worse than an undercooked Neaoplitan style pie. I’m very much looking forward to checking this place out.

SL – excellent point about the wood firing, this was before
Persona was open that day and as Glenn stated, the pizza oven was
only at 600 degrees (it usually gets to 800-900). I’m sure that Mr.
Cybulski will be using locally sourced almond wood in addition to
gas in the very near future.

We tried this place yesterday. The ingredients were fresh, and the employees were nice, but the pizzas weren’t baked the way Glenn demonstrated in the video. They put the pizzas in the oven, left them there, and never spun them at all. Right before taking them out, they domed them for maybe a millisecond or two but they didn’t seem to check if doming accomplished what it was supposed do. Thus, not sure if our pizzas turned out they way they were meant to. Our impression was that the pizza was okay, had a good crunch, but tasted slightly burnt.

This pizza is amazing! I have never tasted anything even close to this in the good old USA. (yes, in Italy)
The ingredients are all fresh, Joe is a master chef and the staff were all very welcoming and helpful. I predict long lines in the months ahead.